ITI Techmedia To Reveal How Game Design Methodology Can Reduce Development Costs

18 July 2007, ITI Techmedia today announced the subject of its speaker session to be hosted by Paul Sheppard of ITI Techmedia at this year's Develop Conference taking place in Brighton from 24 to 26 July 2007.

This session will examine how concentrating on game design early in the production process is key to reducing the development cost of modern computer games. Without a formal design methodology in place, communication problems often occur within development teams resulting in incorrect and expensive asset creation due to fundamental misunderstandings about the game design. The application of such a methodology could save the games industry millions of dollars in development costs.

Scottish-based ITI Techmedia is investing over £5m in a R&D Programme to address this core issue and will present at Develop the concept for a new, formal, easy-to-use, notation-based methodology intended for widespread adoption across the games industry. This methodology will provide designers, programmers, artists and producers with a common framework that will allow them to work and communicate effectively and creatively together.

An explanation of this methodology will illustrate how game play can be tested in a pre-production environment. The session will show how difficulty levels can be identified, viewed as a 'difficulty graphs' and modified to ensure that games stay in the 'fun zone' - that critical state between frustration and boredom.

Commenting on this exciting new approach David Creed, CEO of ITI Scotland, said: "We believe this R&D Programme provides a great opportunity to create state-of-the-art tools for the benefit of the global game development community. Most of all, it will help overcome a growing industry problem. The session at Develop demonstrates how to address many of the problem points associated with the game development process and how these can be overcome to help reduce development cost and lead time."

The session will be hosted by Paul Sheppard, R&D Programme Manager at ITI Techmedia, and formerly co-founder of Eidos's New Media Division. William Latham, creator of bestselling game The Thing, will be chairing the session and running the subsequent Q&A.

ITI Techmedia's speaker session takes place on Thursday 26 July at 3:30pm in conference room 1.

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Notes to Editor

For further information, interviews or photography please contact:

Jessica Sealby / Jamie Henderson

Firefly Communications

0131 553 0150

jessica.sealby@fireflycomms.com /

james.henderson@fireflycomms.com

About ITI Techmedia

ITI Techmedia is a commercial organisation focused on driving sustainable economic growth in Scotland through ownership of commercially targeted R&D programmes that deliver world-class intellectual assets. It identifies technologies required to address future global market opportunities, then funds and manages R&D Programmes and the subsequent commercial exploitation of new intellectual property (IP).

Further information is available on the website: www.ititechmedia.com.

About Paul Sheppard

Paul Sheppard is Programme Manager of the Online Games Development (OGD) Programme at ITI Techmedia. Previously Paul worked for Eidos Interactive Ltd in a variety of roles, and was co-founder of its New Media group focusing on opportunities in developing technologies with a specific emphasis on broadband services, online and mobile gaming.

About William Latham

William was CEO of Computer Artworks Ltd from 1994-2003. Hit games produced included The THING, which was Number One in the UK and Germany. He is experienced in film rights negotiation, copyright, digital asset management and games technology development. He is widely recognised for his procedural/ mutation work and is co-author of the book 'Evolutionary Art and Computers' produced whilst at IBM. He is founder of Games Audit Ltd, Professor of Creative Technology at Leeds University and a visiting Senior Research Fellow of Goldsmiths College, London.